D&D General Souls and Spirits - are they necessary in order to exist?

[Clint_L]

Edition-agnostic question here, and answers based on different editions might be of interest.

First, the background:

Some years ago in my current campaign one of the PCs - a Human Fighter - suffered a mishap where pulling a card from a modified Deck of Many Things stripped away his soul but otherwise left him hale and hearty. He ran for a few in-game years like this (and, somewhat incredibly for both the player and the game, stayed alive the whole time) while slowly coming to realize his odd condition, then eventually - with some very high-powered help - he got a soul stuffed into him that nobody else was using (it was extracted from the soul gem found in Ghost Tower of Inverness).

The ramifications of this were both good and bad. The good: he became completely invisible to most undead, who see only the soul or spirit of the living. He also became immune to a few (quite rare) effects that specifically target the spirit. The bad: if he died he was done. No revival in any manner, no speak with dead, nothing.

And so, my question to you all:

Would you allow a PC to lose its soul or spirit like this and yet still remain alive and playable?

If no, why?

If yes, what would you have as the ramifications of having no soul?

So, this is a topic I've wrestled with in my games at a kind of ethical level, because I don't believe in spirits or souls. I don't think they exist. Which on one level is fine, because I don't think dragons exist either, and I am perfectly okay playing a game with dragons. So I basically just treat souls and spirits as part of the setting. However, unlike dragons, lots of people - the majority of people - do believe in souls or spirits, so it kind of feels like trivializing people's closely held beliefs, and I am not super comfortable with it.

But the game really leans into the idea of different planes of existence, including afterlives and so on. So I kind of treat D&D characters as sort of multi-planar entities and try not to dwell on the implications too much. It's all part of the fantasy.

Addressing your specific question: yes, I would absolutely allow a character to exist like that. In fact, I think it is super cool with really interesting story implications. The idea that undead only see spirits or souls is interesting, too; I don't play them that way but I like it.

 

[Lanefan]

Agreed. It's not possible to have a universe where you say, "This universe is just like our universe and has all the same physics and chemistry but also magic as described exists."

A point of view with which I fundamentally disagree. It can be done, and more, it can be done in a consistently explainable manner.

The fantastic elements are incompatible with observed physical law.

As we observe it, yes. But our world doesn't have magic in the sense the game worlds do, and my theory of magic-as-physics takes worlds like ours into account.

In my long experience with this question, it's always worse to assume that "physics is just like the real universe" and reason from that than it is to reason from "this magical stuff exists so the underlying physics must provide for it". The former leads to table arguments and rulings that create severe contradiction with what the rules of the game and the setting information describes. It also tends to lead to incoherent settings - "Why does a setting with a ten thousand year written history not develop higher forms of technology over time if their physics are identical to our own? Why don't we have machine guns and internal combustion engines and computers by now? Is everyone just stupid?"

Well, the answer to that last question could always be "yes".

A perhaps better answer might be that the deities in general have prevented such developments as they realize that such will lead to a loss of worship; with corresponding loss of power and influence. Or, for a different rationale, they've prevented such developments because they know (perhaps from experience with other worlds) those developments will eventually make the world uninhabitable.

 

[Lanefan]

The idea that undead only see spirits or souls is interesting, too; I don't play them that way but I like it.

It wasn't a thing I'd even considered until this guy happened and I had to think through the ramifications of being soul-less. It seemed to make sense and was consistent with everything already established, so I just went with it.

It came up again later when a different character (run by the same player!) got turned into a vampire for a while, and I had to figure out how his night vision worked and what he could see. Those tasty tasty souls glowed like beacons!

 

[Krachek]

Just Cheers to the concept.
Philosophic role play is always fun.

 

[Lorithen]

A question from my DM, who is also reading this but is not active on Enworld: Is anyone here (other than Lanefan and I) not playing 5e?

Given the diverse range of responses so far, he's curious about whether there is some correlation with edition.

 

[Celebrim]

A question from my DM, who is also reading this but is not active on Enworld: Is anyone here (other than Lanefan and I) not playing 5e?

Given the diverse range of responses so far, he's curious about whether there is some correlation with edition.

I play 3.0e.

Although me saying that is like Lanefan saying he plays 1e. It is a true statement but is less than half the story.

 

[Lanefan]

A question from my DM, who is also reading this but is not active on Enworld: Is anyone here (other than Lanefan and I) not playing 5e?

Given the diverse range of responses so far, he's curious about whether there is some correlation with edition.

More to the point, is anyone's response thus far based on a specific edition, or are your responses universal no matter which version you're running?

For my part, while I run a 1e-adjacent I'd probably port the way I've done this over to any edition.

 

[ichabod]

A question from my DM, who is also reading this but is not active on Enworld: Is anyone here (other than Lanefan and I) not playing 5e?

Given the diverse range of responses so far, he's curious about whether there is some correlation with edition.

My answer is based on my homebrew world. It has lore about where souls go (so you could go to that land of the dead and find the person's soul). If the soul is carrying the personality into the land of the dead (or hanging around as a ghost), then that personality must not be in the brain any more.

Conservation of personality.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

lots of posts that I just scanned.

More to the point, is anyone's response thus far based on a specific edition, or are your responses universal no matter which version you're running?

For my part, while I run a 1e-adjacent I'd probably port the way I've done this over to any edition.

I know you said edition agnostic but, looking at the spell Magic Jar through the multiple editions: Your body becomes comatose when your soul leaves it. If the spell ends and your soul is too far away to return to your body, your body dies.

So, by that reading:
The spell allows you to stay alive even when you have no soul but you are a vegetable.

If there is no spell to preserve your body, you die. Therefore, without a soul, your body dies.

 

[Umbran]

But the game really leans into the idea of different planes of existence, including afterlives and so on. So I kind of treat D&D characters as sort of multi-planar entities and try not to dwell on the implications too much. It's all part of the fantasy.

Yeah. Most times I run D&D, the truth of the matter isn't explicitly known in the game world. Folks die. Very rarely, folks come back from the dead. Everyone in-world figures that there's something of you that must then continue to exist after you die, that gets brought back. They call that a spirit or soul.

Are they right? Does it actually exist? Meh. It only needs to be specified if the PCs are going to have the opportunity to use that information. But then, I also usually run games such that the literal existence of gods cannot be proven either.